Sealed Heir Awakens; From Corpse to Conqueror

Chapter 2: Murdered

Darkness.

Then pain very sharp, blinding, dragging Ethan back to consciousness.

His head throbbed where it had struck the dresser. Warm blood matted his hair, sticky against his scalp. He tried to move, but Claire's weight pressed down on his shoulders while Vincent's hands crushed his windpipe.

"Stop struggling," Vincent hissed, his face inches from Ethan's. "You're just making this harder on yourself."

Ethan's fingers scrabbled uselessly against Vincent's wrists. His boss's grip was iron, professional almost, like he'd done this before. The thought sent ice through Ethan's veins even as his oxygen-starved brain began to fade.

"Vincent, please!" Claire's voice cracked. "He's turning blue!"

"Good. Means it's working."

"You said we were just going to scare him!"

"Plans change." Vincent's voice remained terrifyingly calm. "He saw us, Claire. He was going to ruin everything. My career. Your comfortable life. Did you think he'd just walk away quietly?"

Ethan's vision blurred. The edges of the room grew darker, closing in like a tunnel. He could see Claire's face above him, tears streaming down her cheeks, her hands still pinning him down.

She's choosing this. She's choosing him over me. The betrayal hurt worse than the strangulation.

"I'm sorry," Claire sobbed. "Ethan, I'm so sorry, but I can't…I can't go back to having nothing. I can't go back to that life."

Ethan wanted to scream. Wanted to tell her that they'd never had nothing, that they'd had each other, that love was supposed to mean something. But his lungs were empty, his throat crushed, and the words died unspoken.

The pressure in his chest, that lifelong companion he'd never understood suddenly flared with desperate intensity. It wasn't anxiety. It had never been anxiety. It was something else, something ancient and furious, trying to claw its way out.

Too late.

"He's gone limp," Claire whispered.

Vincent held on for another thirty seconds, then released his grip. Ethan's head lolled to the side, his eyes staring at nothing.

"Oh God. Oh God, what did we do?" Claire scrambled backward, hands over her mouth.

"We protected ourselves." Vincent stood, his businessman composure already returning. He grabbed his pants from the floor and stepped into them with practiced efficiency. "Now we need to be smart about this."

"Smart? Vincent, we just killed someone!"

"I killed someone. You were just here." Vincent's eyes hardened. "Remember that. If this goes wrong, I'll make sure everyone knows you begged me to do it. That you planned the whole thing."

Claire's face went pale. "You wouldn't."

"Try me." He pulled his shirt on, buttoned it methodically. "Now, here's what's going to happen. We're going to make this look like an accident. Something tragic but explainable."

"How?"

Vincent walked to the window, looked out at the city lights, then smiled. "The cliffs. North shore. Everyone knows Ethan worked late, was always exhausted. Fell asleep at the wheel, drove right off the edge. They find his car in the ocean next week, case closed."

Claire stared at Ethan's body, her face a mask of horror and calculation. "What if someone saw him come home?"

"Did you see anyone in the hallway?"

"No, but."

"Then no one saw him. He left work, never made it home. Simple." Vincent grabbed Ethan's jacket from where it had fallen. "Help me get him to my car. We'll take the service elevator, avoid the cameras."

"I can't. Vincent, I can't touch him."

"You already did when you held him down." Vincent's voice turned cold. "You're in this now, Claire. All the way. So you can either help me, or you can go to prison. Your choice."

Claire looked at her husband's body one more time. Then she nodded.

They wrapped Ethan in the bedsheet, stuffed him into a large suitcase Vincent kept in his car for business trips. The irony wasn't lost on either of them, how easily a human life could be compressed, hidden, erased.

The service elevator was empty, as Vincent knew it would be at this hour. They loaded the suitcase into the trunk of his Mercedes, moved with the calm efficiency of people who'd already crossed a line and couldn't go back.

Vincent drove. Claire sat in the passenger seat, silent, staring at her hands.

"We need to get our story straight," Vincent said as they headed north toward the coast. "When did you last see him?"

"This morning. He left for work around seven."

"Good. Stick with that. I'll say he seemed stressed lately, overworked. The narrative writes itself."

Inside the trunk, wrapped in darkness, Ethan's body remained still. But beneath his shirt, beneath his skin, something pulsed with faint light. The heirloom his mother had pressed into his hands twenty-nine years ago, the strange metallic pendant she'd made him promise never to remove, it was a warming.

Vincent pulled onto the coastal highway. The ocean stretched black and infinite to their right, waves crashing against rocks hundreds of feet below. No guardrails on this stretch. Just asphalt, cliff edge, and darkness.

"Here," Vincent said, pulling onto a deserted overlook. "Help me get him out."

They dragged the suitcase to the cliff edge. Below, the Pacific Ocean churned like a living thing, hungry and cold.

"What if the body washes up?" Claire asked.

"It won't. Current here pulls everything out to sea. By the time anyone finds anything, it'll be unrecognizable." Vincent unzipped the suitcase. "On three."

They lifted Ethan's body between them. His head lolled backward, arms hanging limp.

"One."

The pendant beneath his shirt grew hotter, beginning to burn against his skin.

"Two."

A hairline crack appeared in the metal, light seeping through.

"Three."

They threw him over the edge.

Ethan's body tumbled through empty air, spinning, falling toward the black water below. The wind screamed past him. The ocean rushed up to meet him.

And the pendant shattered.

Light exploded from his chest, blinding, blue-white, like a star being born. It lasted only a second before Ethan hit the water, the impact driving him deep beneath the surface.

Vincent and Claire stood at the cliff edge, staring down at the darkness.

"Did you see that?" Claire whispered.

"See what?"

"I thought I saw... light. Like lightning."

"There's no storm. You're seeing things." Vincent grabbed her arm. "Come on. We need to get rid of the suitcase and establish our alibis."

They returned to the car, drove back toward the city, leaving Ethan to sink into the depths.

Neither of them saw the glow beginning to pulse beneath the waves.

Neither of them knew that death wasn't the end, it was the awakening.

Sixty feet underwater, Ethan's body drifted through the darkness, pulled by currents that should have dragged him out to sea. But something was wrong. The currents moved around him, as if repelled by an invisible force.

His heart had stopped. His lungs were full of water.

But the thing in his chest, the sealed power his mother had hidden there was finally, catastrophically, breaking free.

A pulse of energy rippled through the ocean. Fish scattered. The water itself seemed to recoil.

And Ethan Cross began to change.